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Adam Van Brimmer: In memory of 'those forever young'

By the time most people read this, Tom Mayle will have already celebrated Memorial Day.

His truck, the one with the U.S. Army Ranger sticker in the back window, will be parked back in his driveway. A few stray flower petals will litter the passenger seat. So will a flask empty of all but a few drops of 20-year-old scotch.

Mayle’s eyes will still be red but his cheeks will be dry. His wife and youngest daughter will go about their morning routine a little quieter than usual. Later, he may or may not join them for the holiday trip to the pool and a barbecue.

Mayle is a Ranger of the 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. He’s not active duty, hasn’t been for two decades. But he’s still a part of the brotherhood, down to the Ranger cut of his hair. And Memorial Day to a Ranger — to all American servicemen — is the proudest and saddest day of the year.

“I miss my brothers every day,” Mayle said. “You’d think over time it would get easier, but it only gets harder.”

Forever young

Mayle cried with his fallen brothers by the dawn’s early light this morning. He took his flowers and his flask to the 1st Ranger Battalion Memorial at Hunter Army Airfield.

He toasted the 43 1/75 Rangers immortalized there, taking a swig for him and pouring the rest on the ground. The faces of the 13 fallen Rangers he served with flickered across his mind’s eye.

Men he trained with in the jungles of Latin America and the mountains of Europe.

Men he fought with on a half-completed runway being built on the edge of a small Caribbean island.

The faces make Mayle smile. They don’t age, even as the one he sees in the mirror does.

“Not a day goes by where you don’t think about the last time you saw them. The thumbs up they gave as they boarded the helicopter for the last time,” Mayle said. “You see them as forever young, and they have a greater impact on your life than anything else you can imagine.”

Tight bond

One face in particular is never far from Mayle’s thoughts: Russell Robinson’s.

Mayle met Robinson on “day one” of basic training. The pair formed an immediate bond. Both were small-town Midwesterns: Mayle of Brilliant, Ohio, and Robinson from Harpers Ferry, Iowa, two hamlets so similar “if you closed your eyes and they dropped you in there you’d have a hard time figuring one from the other.”

They talked — argued — Big 10 football. Russell dubbed Mayle with the nickname “Papi” because Mayle was an old Ranger trainee at age 26.

Together, they survived jump school and “RIP” — the Ranger Indoctrination Program better known as “ungodly hell.”

They remained close even after being put in separate companies upon earning their Ranger black berets. What little garrison time they enjoyed — Rangers spend more days away from Hunter than on it — they enjoyed together along with a handful of other Rangers who went through basic, jump school and RIP alongside them.

Years later, Mayle would twice walk into a hospital delivery room ready to name his newborn son Russell. Twice, he was blessed with girls instead.

The bond between Mayle and Russell is not uncommon among Rangers and other special ops soldiers.

“You become closer than family,” Mayle said. “I was closer to Russell and some of the other Rangers than I was to my own brother, and that’s not meant to slight my brother.”

Ultimate sacrifice

Mayle lost his Ranger brother, Robinson, during the 1983 invasion of Grenada.

The pair took part in the assault on Point Salinas Airport. Grenada’s Marxist government, with the help of Cuba, was expanding the airport’s runway to 9,000 feet. U.S. officials feared the landing strip would become a forward operating base for Soviet activity in the Western Hemisphere.

Mayle parachuted into the engagement. Robinson, meanwhile, flew in with equipment. Once on the ground, he and several other Rangers hopped in a jeep and were patrolling the area when they were ambushed.

All but one was killed.

Mayle heard the news three days later. Not long after, he “carried Russell to the grave,” serving as a pallbearer at his funeral back home in Iowa.

Mayle relives those days — parachuting in, hearing of Robinson’s death, the funeral — twice a year. One is today. The other is Oct. 25, the anniversary of the invasion and Robinson’s death.

At some point today, some well-meaning acquaintance will take Mayle’s hand and thank him for his service. He’ll politely accept, and depending on the circumstances, he may or may not explain that Memorial Day is for the Russell Robinsons, not the Tom Mayles.

“People should go out to the beach today and have a cookout and share time with their families, because that freedom, that lifestyle, is what these guys died to protect,” Mayle said. “They don’t want every American to spend the day remembering them. They would want you to live your life.

“Be thankful, but leave the remembrances to us who sweated and bled with them.”

Adam Van Brimmer’s column appears each Monday. He blogs several days a week at www.savannahnow.com and also is a social media regular @avanbrimmer on Twitter and Daddy Warbucks on Facebook.